Trigger Strategy Tom Kerwin

Can you get through life without ever oversimplifying something? If not, when is it OK? And what does that have to do with parenting, politics and pole-climbing professionals?

We talk about a post that Tom saw in Reddit: a Product Manager complaining about the designers they worked with (shock horror!). The underlying vibe of the complaint looked eerily similar to many situations we’ve both seen. And the responses in the Reddit thread tended to jump to mono-perspective “root cause” type reasoning (also a familiar pattern). So we took a few minutes to break down the situation from different angles, unpacking more of the conditions and dynamics that might be modulating the situation. Note: the specifics of this situation are quite product/design-specific, so bear with us if we slip into jargon. Because we suspect the general dynamics at play will rhyme with situations you’ve found yourself in. Let us know: what dynamics or conditions do you think we missed? Plus: towards the end, we share Jabe Bloom’s Ideal Present exercise, which is a collaborative and multi-perspective approach to managing the evolutionary potential of the present. Here’s the link we mentioned to a video where Ben Mosior walks you through the exercise in 5 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/live/19KUsV_qeyk?si=r4hOSMZ_CtFTvCcS

How come your favourite methods don’t always work? We know one-size doesn’t fit-all, and we know that it depends on context … but *how* does it depend on context? We’ve been exploring a framework or model that can help iron out the fiddliness, and today we talk through some of the ideas, introducing a sort of spectrum that covers what we might call Solution Oriented — Outcome Oriented — Emergence Oriented (though we don’t use exactly those words in the conversation). It’s a bit of a meaty one today, enjoy!

How do you know if you're being creative or innovative? Does it even matter? We talk about art, business, feathers, and Corissa's fury with an underperforming coffee machine that set her on a path of creativity or innovation or maybe something else entirely ... and if you have a story of creativity or innovation you’d like to share, record it here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message

We made it! The sixth and final episode in the series where we read through prompts from an article and talk about what they mean to us. In this episode, Plant Seeds — Watch Them Grow, Tailor Ways of Working and Facing Uncertainty. We encourage you to think about them too! We also talk through some important notes that apply to this whole series at the very end. If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. And if you’d like to follow along with the original article: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate

The fifth and penultimate episode in the series where we read through prompts from an article and talk about what they mean to us. In this episode, Accept Diverse Strengths and Skills, Collaboratively Sense and Shape, and Coherence vs. Alignment. We encourage you to think about them too! If you’d like to share a short reflection with us, please record one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/trigger-strategy/message. If you’d like to follow along with the original article: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate